Michelle Styles - The Gladiator's Honor

'But I want you to live,' she whispered. 'Is that so wicked of me?'

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed each of her fingers one by one.

'I have no intention of dying,' he assured her. 'And every intention of fighting for you after I have regained my honour.'

He bent his head and captured her lips. He felt them part and tasted the honeyed sweetness of her mouth, drinking from it as if it was his last chance. His arms came around and pressed her close, her curves moulding to the hardness of his body. Then he recaptured her mouth and continued his exploration.

Everything he wanted to say in words, he tried to say with his kiss. She answered back with a fever and a frenzy that matched his. She seemed to drink the very soul out of him.

He heard a noise behind him. The slightest movement. A footfall. He lifted his head, but Julia recaptured it, her warm hands burning his cheeks.

'Don't stop. Kiss me again, Valens.'

He found he was powerless to resist her plea.

'Looks like the boss guessed right, the rats do return to the nest,' he heard a voice say, then felt the first blow to the back of his head.

Unprepared for the pain, he staggered and reached for his dagger. The second blow came before he could unsheathe it He heard Julia start to scream and then blackness gathered him in its cloak.

Chapter Sixteen

Julia felt a scream rip through her. As the heavy weight of Valens's body sagged against her, she glimpsed the attacker's heavy cudgel. Julia tried to hold Valens upright, but her knees began to buckle under the weight and she was forced to set him down.

In the dim light, she could just make out the white of the attacker's tunic and his snarling scarred face. He lifted his cudgel, preparing to strike Valens again.

Julia's heart stopped. Everything seemed to slow down. Each movement took an age. A rushing noise filled her ears as the cudgel started to come closer. An evil grin split the attacker's face. This was it, the time of her death.

She felt another scream build within her, then escape with a fury. The attacker checked. She crouched low and made a grab for Valens's eating dagger, which hung off his belt. Her hand curled around the hilt and she pulled it with all her might. The dagger arched upwards and hit the neck of the cudgel with a crash that shook her arms. Instinctively she moved the dagger away from her, trying to force the cudgel backwards.

It refused to move. Julia braced her feet against the wall and resisted the attacker's attempts to bring the cudgel down. Neither gave way. Her arms ached and she wondered that she could hold out for this long. The fetid stench of the attacker's breath was overpowering. Gagging, she locked her elbows and used the wall to push her feet off and drive the dagger forward.

The cudgel moved with a suddenness that made her gasp. She saw it fly out of the attacker's hand and bounce to her right. The attacker then ran down a darkened alleyway. She stepped over Valens's prone body and looked up and down a twisting street with its shadowed doorways and narrow darkened alley entrances. Only the faintest of moonbeams pierced the high tenement buildings where several flickering oil lamps showed in the slitted windows.

'Valens,' she muttered under her breath. 'Stand up. Move. We have to leave.'

Her ears strained to hear. Nothing except a low moan, so soft that Julia thought she had misheard. Then it repeated, louder. Julia's heart leapt. Valens was alive.

She used a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow while the other made a slow sweep with the dagger in front of her. The weight grew heavier with each pass. Her shoulder muscles screamed. She wanted to change hands but her fingers were glued to the hilt.

A small movement to her right and Julia used her last ounce of strength and lunged forward. Her arm jerked as the blade hit something soft and bounced back. She heard the cry, the clatter of a dropped object and then footsteps.

She felt her arms begin to give way and lowered the dagger with a heartfelt sigh. She had done it! She had seen off the attacker.

When Valens gave another low moan, Julia immediately knelt by his side, her hand probing his head for any injury. A noise from the alleyway in front of her made her pause and raise the dagger again.

'Who goes there?' she cried, hoping it was a rat. The attacker had to have fled. She was certain she had heard running noises disappearing down the alleyway. 'Show yourself.'

Keeping the dagger trained straight ahead, she stooped down, picked up several pebbles from the road and tossed them in the general direction of the noise. A faint cough made her blood run cold.

'Quite the tigress when you are aroused, Julia.' A cold voice from the alleyway sent shivers down her spine. 'Pity I only learnt of it now.'

'Lucius,' Julia said. Cold sweat started to drip down her back.

'Who else?' Lucius stepped from the shadows. She felt the bile rise in her stomach. She had seen that look on his face all too often. 'You have been a most annoying problem, Julia Antonia, but in the end, you had your uses.'

Julia tried to lash out with her dagger, but missed.

'What are you talking about, Lucius?' she said forcibly, trying not to show her fear. 'I will never do anything for you.'

'But you have, my dear, you led me straight to Gaius Gracchus. I had thought my cousin dead five years ago, dead of an…unfortunate…accident. It grieved his father so and I was able to comfort him and his wife whose illness I had learnt of from my mother. Did you know the senator would have married my mother, but then he saw her cousin? The Gracchi wealth is great and it should have been my birthright Only one person stood between me and its inheritance. So simple, so easy. Why, I never even had to meet the man. How was I to know that the pirate would double-cross me? He took my money, sent me the ransom note and then failed to kill Gaius. Instead, he sold him on.'

'Never trust a pirate.'

'Indeed.'

She glanced at the dark alleyway where the first attacker had disappeared. Her mouth went dry. How long until he would be back with reinforcements?

'Clodius,' she screamed, hoping the elderly porter would hear her through the oak door. 'It's Julia Antonia, help me.'

'All the pleading in the world won't help you.' Lucius leant forward and Julia could see the strange glowing light in his eyes. 'You know it only makes me angry. You and I know Clodius is deaf when he chooses. I took precautions.'

'You are evil,' Julia said between gritted teeth. 'You won't get away with this. My father—'

"The gods have decreed it, Julia Antonia. Such a fitting end for the two people I dislike most in the world dead…killed by a footpad as they attempted to copulate in the alleyway.'

'I don't think so, Lucius. I have a dagger and I am determined to use it.'

His hand snaked out and closed around her wrist like a vice. He tightened until she found the knife slipping from her grasp and falling to the street with a loud clang.

'Correction—you had a dagger.'

Julia swallowed hard and refused to curl up in a ball and wait for the next blow. She brought her arm to her teeth and clamped down on his fingers with all her might.

'You bitch,' he swore and she felt his hand connect with her face, sending her reeling back against the wall.

She collapsed down to the cobbles and her foot kicked the abandoned cudgel. She dropped to her knees and grabbed it.

'Correction, I have another weapon.'

'You have changed, Julia. The mouse has learnt to roar. A pity that.'

He brought the knife down on the cudgel. The reverberations shook her teeth, and she felt the cudgel grow slipper}' from sweat. Her fingers struggled to maintain their grip and knew she would not be able to hold out much longer.